2011 Grammy Predictions: Best Short Form Music Video featuring Lady Gaga and Eminem

As we continue our countdown to the Feb. 13 Grammy Awards, we’re predicting the winner in a category a day. Today we look at Best Short Form Music Video, which includes one of the more interesting video projects we’ve seen in recent years that deserves more attention than it initially received.

If you haven’t seen it, do yourself a favor and check out the “Ain’t No Grave” video and backstory here. It’s video as social experiment. Fans/artists manipulated pre-selected images to create their own frames that then were edited into the black & white video. It speaks to the power of music as a singular and collective experience and is very moving. It goes so far beyond video as promotion, although it is that as well, that it deserves its own category. Having said that, unless Grammy voters have really spent time with it, it will likely be completely dismissed in favor of the other four more traditional form videos here. As colorful and fun as it is, “F*** You” breaks no new ground. We would have replaced it with Katy Perry's cotton-candy-colored "California Gurls" video here. “Stylo” is fantastic, but kind of “more-of-the-same” from our favorite animated reprobates. That leaves “Love the Way You Lie” and “Bad Romance.” Eminem’s video has the sexy stars and controversial content, but Lady Gaga’s pod people video is a work of art that remains fascinating and worth dissecting all these months since its release. The last scene still gets us. It’s like something out of the Faulkner short story “A Rose for Emily” via John Waters.
Winner: “Bad Romance”